Tigers are synonymous with strength, power and dominance, they are known as the king of the jungle for good reason!

Unfortunately Tigers are not native to Japan, so original drawings and tattoos of tigers are drawn from imagination after looking at tiger skins and Chinese painting imagery. This is why a lot of the traditional Japanese style tattoos and paintings will have odd proportioned features such as huge bulbous eyes, small ears and a flatter than usual face. With traditional Japanese tattoo, it is common for bamboo to be tattooed around a tiger.

There is also many paintings of tigers controlled by rope and handler, this is symbolic of Man’s strength being greater than that of a tiger, dominance over the king of the jungle.

There are no hard and fast rules for positioning of the tiger for your tattoo, standing, running, fighting – whatever you think works for you, and the same goes for the colouring, usually they are bright orange, yellow and black stripes, but I have also seen white with black stripes and greyscale coloured tattoos.